3 June 2010 - Day 3

London

Today’s adventures began with an unpleasant early morning wake up. The woman in the bunk next to and under mine woke up around 7:45 and started rustling, zipping, and crinkling her suitcase/plastic bags. Obnoxious. Additionally, every five minutes the door (which is squeaky) opens and closes. Did I mention this woman also snores? Anyways. I went back to sleep and promptly got up late. After another delicious breakfast at the hostel I took a shower and hit the road.

The road led me right to Buckingham Palace where I (sort of) watched the changing of the guard. There were a TON of people and I couldn’t really see, but I got a bunch of pictures of the men in the funny hats, which is really all I wanted. I tried to take a tour of the palace, but apparently you can only tour when the Queen is not in residence during August and September when she heads to Scotland for her annual visit. Guess I’ll have to come back! :)

After the failed attempt to get into the royal residence, I headed to the Queen’s Gallery. It was a little pricey, but I combined it with a ticket to the Mews. A fairly good deal. The gallery was hosting an exhibition called Victoria & Albert, Art & Love. It was a display of many of the works the two had commissioned for each other, created themselves, or collected over their lifetimes. Walking through the exhibit (some exquisite jewels) it became rather obvious that instead of a contractual marriage that many royals end up in, these two genuinely loved each other. This is interesting to me because I had expected to see a lot of tension between the two because of the difficult dynamic – theirs was the first marriage since the early 16^th century that the Queen and her eldest son (the Prince of Wales) represented the ruling dynasty, yet the royal consort (Prince Albert) as the man, ruled the family. It is apparent that the two loved each other and their children very much and were very conscious of the image they desired to present the public with.

At the end of the tour you find out that Albert died of Typhoid Fever at 42, while Queen Victoria went on to rule for another 40 years until her own death in 1902. The end of the tour shows their family tree (they were the same age, unlike their parents where their fathers were 15 and 20 years older than their mothers) and had 9 children. Excerpts from their diaries were written on the walls of the museum and both spoke of their great fortune to be in love and loved by their partner so dearly. It was a lovely show and very interesting.

I followed my visit to the gallery with a trip to the mews. Everyone there seemed to take it for granted that this was the place that the royal horses were kept. I had expected falcons. Apparently, several hundred years ago, the stables caught fire and to keep the horses safe the king sent them to the mews where they have been ever since. The birds are kept in a separate mews in another part of the city. We took a tour of the stables and learned that the royal mews still to this day take care of all the Queen’s travel arrangements, not just those that deal with horses either. Additionally, we were shown all the different carriages that the Queen rides in. One of them – the Australian coach – weighs 2 tons because of the generator in the back that operates the power windows, heating, and cooling. It takes 6 horses to pull it. All of the decals on the sides of the coaches are not transfers, as you might expect, but rather hand painted. It takes approximately 80 hours to paint each crest. Also, the mews had just replaced the hammer cloth (the cloth covering the coachman’s seat) so called because it covers the hammer box – the place where the tools and hammers are kept.

We also got to see some of the horses, the Windsor Greys and the Cleveland Bays. Windsors only need to be the right size, temperament, and color – it doesn’t matter what kind of horse they are. The Bays used to be predominant all over London because the coaches would use that kind of horse throughout the city. With the advent of the automobile, however, the horses were used less and less and currently there are only 4 breeding stallions in the world. The Queen is the head of the society trying to save them and they are currently breeding them with Irish stock horses to try and revive the breed.

After my trip to the mews I attempted to hit up the Westminster Abbey. Unfortunately I arrived just as they closed. I did however get some lovely pictures of not only the Abbey, but the Houses of Parliament as well. I then walked down to the Tate Britain and spent some time there. I had wanted to hit up the Tate Modern, but I knew I wouldn’t have the time and instead took a little more time at Tate Britain.

After seeing some very famous works of art, I meandered to a Starbucks, and then 5 more cafes looking in vain for wireless Internet. I finally (get this) ended up at a McDonalds using something called the Cloud. I really hope that it’s free too, because I think they tried to charge me. How that’s possible when I didn’t put in a card number, I’m not sure. But I supposed anything’s possible with Big Brother watching. ;) Also – the McDonald’s here? Very chic. And the burger was a lot better than those in the States. Weird, but true.

After all this adventuring I was tired and decided to head home. Unfortunately, there had been a fire on the track earlier in the day and the train stopped 2 stops before mine. I decided to get off at Baker Street (not that I had a choice) but instead of hopping a different train or bus, I decided to walk. Turns out, Baker Street is about an hour’s walk from my hostel. But I did get to walk through a corner of Regent’s Park and it was quite lovely – lots of couples, families, runners, and birds. TONS of birds.

I finally made it home and despite some issues with my internet and blog, had a pretty mellow evening. My friend Johanna that I met at the hostel has decided to come to Edinburgh with me and we’ll stay together and explore the city. It should be a lot of fun! But the train and air tickets were so expensive and they took so long that we’ve decided to cancel our Sunday night reservations and take the overnight bus city to city. It should be something of an adventure.

Tomorrow I leave the hostel at 10 to 5am to catch first the tube and then a bus to Stonehenge. I decided to do the dawn trip so I’ll get there super early in the morning and be allowed to go really really close to the stones. Then we’ll go to the Salisbury Cathedral and be back in London by about 3:30. I think I will try and hit one of the churches if we get back a little early and then I’ll go to the Tate Modern. And then I’ll sleep!!! It’s going to be a long day. But an exciting one. :)

I realize there aren't any pictures of my adventures today and I know those are important, especially since I took some images of the signs at the Royal Mews so you can read them yourselves (thank you little super camera!). There were so many from today however and there's no way I have enough time to sort through them all. Therefore, I will post them to my Picassa account. I will post the details at the beginning of the next blog. Some of the pictures may be out of order due to a formatting issue, but hopefully you'll get the gist. :)